Our President Hichilema sometimes you win more when you lose

By Daily Revelation Editor

There is a phrase that says that “he who comes to equity must come with clean hands”, i.e. a person who makes a claim in equity must be free from any taint of fraud with respect to that claim. For example, a person seeking to enforce an agreement must not himself be in breach of it.

President Hakainde Hichilema called for a press conference on Tuesday at which he issued threats and denounced the organisers of the protest that was scheduled for today over his haste moves to amend the constitution of the Republic. The President used the occasion to complain against what he termed as ‘venomous hatred’, he could feel and touch against him because of the region, Southern Province, he comes from.

His supporters and spin doctors have predictably gone to town defending him that he was not referring to the hatred against him from some regions but a group of entitled individuals from those regions. We would have given him the benefit of doubt over this matter, but his now and previous views on regionalism betray that claim. Hichilema has previously been quoted following his several electoral losses that he will have already been president had it not been for the region he hailed from. Was he making that statement in reference to the same few entitled individuals or it was a more general view? We leave this to you to answer as the answer is actually simpler than 1+1= 2. 

Clearly, Zambians repudiated that notion he has held for a long time, and overwhelmingly so, when they gave him close to 60 percent of the vote in the 2021 general elections, across all the regions of the country. His vote margins with his biggest competitor and incumbent at the time Edgar Lungu stood as follows: Southern Province: HH 91.80%, Lungu 5.53%, Eastern Province: Lungu 54.29%, HH 37.61%, Luapula Province: Lungu 66.81%, HH 19.34%, Western Province: HH 82.33%, Lungu 13.30%, Central Province: HH 60.56%, Lungu 34.72%, Muchinga Province: Lungu 61.89%, HH 31.04%, Northern Province: Lungu 56.35%, HH 36.80%, Copperbelt Province: HH 56.39%, Lungu 40.72%, Lusaka Province: HH 53.68%, Lungu 37.72%, North-Western Province: HH 87.58%, Lungu 9.01%,

NATIONAL: HH 57.51%,  Lungu 37.72

Clearly, Zambians loved Hichilema so much so that they gave him a commanding mandate, and expected him to deliver on his promises, including his promise that he would seek to address the country’s constitutional challenges via a referendum, something he has, however, reneged on.

And so Hichilema called for a press briefing at State House, where he literally raised region in a national address, while threatening and denouncing the same people he said he wanted to dialogue with. If the President was aware that there was going to be a meeting with the OASIS Forum to ‘dialogue’ over the constitution, why did he call for the press briefing in the first place before that same meeting, in order to show that he was magnanimous enough and was genuine about the same dialogue process?

Why didn’t he simply uphold his oath of office by simply guaranteeing the protests and actually encouraging them to proceed, as a democrat that he says he is?

One thing that is clearly predictable about Hichilema is that he is determined to foist these constitutional amendments via people’s throats, and is only using the so-called dialogue to sort of give legitimacy to his ill-conceived position on the matter.

President Hichilema is the leader of this country. Surely he can summon the leadership mantle given to him by God, through the Zambian people, to shelve this whole process for now until such a time that he will arrange for his promised referendum when he has enough time on his watch. Sometimes you win more by losing.